


Winter Wonderland

by otter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otter/pseuds/otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is profoundly suspicious of the city that sits on the barren ice sheet at the North Pole. His friend Scott doesn't seem to mind being an elf-slave, and liberating the captive reindeer was <i>not</i> Stiles' best idea ever, but a little recon inside the city walls is too tempting to pass up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't beta'ed this. I don't know what happened. I don't know what this is. I might've had a little too much wassail.

Stiles has a simple, brilliant plan for freeing Scott from the bonds of his subjugation.

"My what?" Scott says. He pulls another bin full of perfectly good stuff off of the sleigh and dumps it onto the trash pile.

Stiles pounces on it, crowing triumphantly when he comes up with a pair of flannel pajama pants. One of the seams is kind of wobbly, and they're sort of huge, but they're perfectly wearable, if he ties the drawstring tight. They have tiny pandas printed on the fabric, and they're _awesome._ Stiles throws them over his shoulder and keeps sifting through the rest.

"Your subjugation," he repeats. "Captivity. Serfdom. Completely uncool exploitation of labor."

"That's not even—"

"It's a really simple plan," Stiles interrupts, before Scott can get going with his 'I'm not being held prisoner' thing. Scott has serious Stockholm Syndrome; Stiles knows because he watches _Maury Povich_ in the afternoons. "When you come out here to dump the 'trash'" — Stiles hooks his claws into air-quotes because Scott's idea of what constitutes garbage is frankly unfathomable — "they don't even send a guard out with you. You could just walk away."

"Well, yeah, I _could,_ except that I don't actually want to," Scott says. He looks completely exasperated with the whole conversation — probably because they've had extremely similar ones three times before — but at least it's a fond kind of fed up. "You get that I like it here, right? I grew up here, everybody I know lives here, everything is _awesome_ here... and anyway, if I did want to leave, which I don't, I could basically hitch a ride to anywhere."

"Are you saying that if you could go anywhere in the world you _wouldn't_ want to come back to my ice cave and play Mario Kart?" Stiles says. His heart's not actually breaking, it just maybe feels that way, a little, like he's been punched in the chest.

"How do you have Mario Kart in an ice cave?" Scott asks, missing the point completely.

"Please, I don't risk coming this close to the city just looking for flannel pajamas. I've gotten some quality stuff out of this trash heap. Like a PlayStation and a plasma flatscreen. They're in perfectly good condition, except when the console throws sparks and the flatscreen kind of ripples like it's turning into a gateway to another dimension or something. But that's no big deal. Your overlord must be crazy, throwing all this away."

"He's not my _overlord,_ " Scott says, but he's laughing while he tosses more perfectly serviceable stuff onto the pile. "He's _Santa Claus._ Haven't you ever heard of Santa Claus? Kind of jolly, wears a red suit, gives presents to all the good little children on Christmas? Rides around in a sleigh with a bunch of reindeer?"

Stiles shudders, and his fur puffs up like it does when he's scared, to make him look bigger. "Don't talk to me about reindeer," he says. "I've had traumatic reindeer-related experiences."

His traumatic experiences are actually more reindeer-adjacent: the masters inside the slave city use the reindeer as draft animals, but they're taken out sometimes to graze for lichen on the ice plains. He'd tried to liberate them once, without realizing that they were a) much bigger close up, and b) not very concerned about their own captivity (just like another domesticated species of moron he knows and loves). Also, they're guarded by massive, terrifying wolf-creatures that apparently spend their time napping in snow drifts, being slowly covered over and camouflaged by the weather, until they decide to emerge, snarling, and try to tear intruders apart. Stiles had walked — well, run — away from the incident with a healthy appreciation for herd-guardian animals and a chunk of pelt missing from his ass. It's part of the reason he prefers to wear pants, now, although his people aren't typically big on clothing.

Scott says the Great Wolves watch over the reindeer when the herd is outside the city's walls because of polar bears. Stiles has his doubts, and he wonders sometimes what exactly the wolves eat, if not Yeti, because he's pretty sure wolves need meat to live, and as far as he can tell, Scott's people subsist entirely off of candy. Not that there's anything wrong with that; Stiles tried it himself, because candy is infinitely more delicious than another shrimp casserole or tiny-fish stew, but apparently it's not actually a food group for anybody but elf-slaves, because Stiles also spent two days throwing up and trying to dictate his last will and testament to his dad as a result of that little adventure.

He hasn't _stopped_ eating candy, of course, he just eats it _with_ his tiny-fish stew, now. And there's always plenty of sugary delights in the trash: chocolates that aren't perfectly formed, candy canes that came out more like candy spears, gingersnaps that are a little burnt around the edges. Scott screwed up a full dozen double-chocolate peppermint muffins on purpose once, just so he could pass them to Stiles on the sly, which was when Stiles knew they were going to be friends for life.

"You know, you could just come inside," Scott says.

Stiles snorts, because the idea is completely absurd, and Stiles knows better. His father is a great warrior, beloved among their people for the time he'd fought off _two_ polar bears that had threatened their village. He's taught Stiles a great many lessons about how to fight and knowing one's enemy. And sure, admittedly, Stiles has failed to absorb most of those lessons, but among the things Stiles has liberated from this trash dump is also a tablet computer that seems to have nothing wrong with it at all, except that it gets a wi-fi signal literally _everywhere,_ even out in the snow wastes and the barrens. Stiles has used it to watch a terrifying amount of real-crime documentaries.

"I know better than to go anywhere near a crime lord with a nickname like 'Claws,'" Stiles says. "If I went in there, next thing you know you'll be hauling my mutilated body out here with the rest of the garbage."

"You are _so gross._ " Scott rolls his eyes as he says it, but he also sounds thrilled, like nobody else he knows is gross and it's kind of an exciting novelty. "Just come over to the gates with me and _look,_ okay? And then if you want to, I'll bring you inside. I know you're dying to see what's happening in there. I'm offering you a personal tour."

Stiles _is_ dying to know, but mostly because all the detective shows have been giving him delusions of investigative grandeur. He knows what the city is, the horrors that happen there, because all of the Yeti know.

But none of them have been _inside._ Stiles is pretty sure none of the others have ever been as close as he has, just by venturing this near to the city wall. They've only seen the glow of the never-ending fires from a cautious distance, and sometimes, when the wind stills and the world goes quiet, they've heard the captive laborers singing their chants and dirges.

"I won't let anything bad happen to you, I promise," Scott says, like he's completely confident in his own ability to live up to that ridiculous oath.

Stiles should probably admit that he's the ridiculous one, though. He carefully pulls together his city dump loot into a single pile and sets it down.

"This is the stupidest idea you've ever had," Stiles says.

Scott narrows his eyes. _"Do it,"_ he says, like a dare.

And, well, a dare's a dare.

Everything that happens after that is just the natural progression of events, tumbling into each other like wobbly, defective, discarded dominoes.

+++

Stiles' disguise is ridiculous. Also, he feels really weird, naked and pink and too cold.

Scott always looks a little flushed, rosy-cheeked, but that's just an elf thing. Next to Scott's healthy glow, Stiles looks like something pale and sickly, ready to drop. There's a crimson blush creeping down his neck, crawling down his chest like the first symptom of a horrifying disease, and the fact that he's covering it up with elvish prison clothes isn't actually helping his incipient panic.

"This is never going to work," he tells Scott. He looks down at his own nearly fur-less arms and the tiny delicate not-claws on the backs of his fingers, his body a landscape he only knows in passing, and feels completely lost without the security of his dense haircoat, his curling horns, his warm, well-furred ears. Elf pants are cruel; kind masters would have given them fleecey pajamas, but instead they're forced to wear trousers that cling uncomfortably in all the embarrassing places. The embroidery on the coat is nice, though. Stiles can't believe that all this stuff failed to pass some kind of slave master quality control, it's so _wasteful._ Somewhere a slave-elf child is probably huddling in the cold for want of a pair of tight pants.

"Are you kidding? I thought I was going to have to disguise every inch of you! This is great, you almost look like an elf already! I had no idea you were so skinny under all that fluff."

"My coat is majestic, not _fluffy,_ " Stiles grumbles. "And I'm not skinny, either. I'm... lithe. Lanky, maybe. Coltishly graceful."

"Five minutes ago you tripped over _air_ and almost broke my jaw with your face."

"Nobody's going to notice your jaw getting a little more crooked, okay? Tell me how to put these things on."

Scott clearly thinks it's a stupid question, but he crouches down anyway and manhandles Stiles' long-toed, unfurred feet into a pair of sturdy boots with curled, pointed toes. They reach up nearly to Stiles' knees, and the fit's a little loose, but they're warm, at least. When Scott straightens up again, he levels an expertly assessing gaze at Stiles' disguise, like he thinks he's on _What Not To Wear: Arctic Edition._

"Hat," he says, and he turns back to rummage in the bin for a moment before he comes up with a knitted cap that looks three sizes too big for Stiles' skull. There's a reindeer motif all around it, which just seems cruel and unusual considering that Stiles is not even joking about his terror of reindeer, but he has to admit it does a good job, falling nearly over his eyes in the front, concealing his snow-white hair in the back, hiding the tiny nubs that remain of his horns and the very un-elvish rounded tips of his ears.

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," Stiles says, wiggling his toes in his silly shoes, waggling his fingers and feeling completely off-balance without the solid, subtle weight of his claws. He feels like a newborn, not yet ready to live outside its mother's pouch. "I'm _cold._ And I mean that in an unpleasant way. Yeti don't even _get_ cold. It's the heat we have to worry about, which is the only reason we can still shift out of our fur at all, it's like an emergency defense mechanism and I'm beginning to think using it in a non-emergency situation is maybe my worst idea ever. Scott, I'm really _pink,_ okay, I don't know how to deal with this and I really miss my windproof top-coat and—"

Scott's not even paying attention. He's staring out toward the ice plains, head tilted like he's listening to something else, and then he says, "Oh, fudgecakes! The herders are coming, look busy!"

"Do _what?_ How?" Stiles squawks, because _herdsmen,_ like as in _reindeer herdsmen,_ like as in _giant Yeti-eating wolves?_

Scott thrusts a bin full of "garbage" into Stiles' arms, and the fact that Stiles turns and dumps it onto the growing pile without even thinking about it has more to do with his urge to drop the dead weight and flee than it does with maintaining his cover.

The reindeer aren't passing by very closely, so Stiles doesn't actually give in to his first impulse and burrow into the trash heap, never to be seen again. But he's not even worried about the reindeer now, anyway, because there are two huge wolf-people pacing alongside at the edges of the small herd, their heads and ears swiveling around like they're on constant alert against all dangers real and imagined, and they're—

Okay, now that he's actually looking at more than just a threatening mouthful of teeth, they're really pretty. They're both light colored, well adapted to the Arctic environment, but one's heavily frosted with gray along its shoulders and back, silver splashed across its face like a mask, and the other is just white on white, electric blue eyes and a black nose and the rest of it practically disappearing against wind-whipped snow. It glances at them, not breaking stride, and then looks away again, like it's bored with the view. They aren't actually shaped like real wolves; their proportions are all wrong, their hind legs over-long and their forelegs built more like arms, like they could actually stand up and walk if they wanted to. Stiles has never seen anything like them, not even on television, which is why he's always thought that they're genetic experiments gone kind of startlingly right.

Stiles turns to grab another bin, and throws the whole thing, container and all, onto the pile. "I think they've gotten bigger since the last time I saw them," Stiles says, and he's not sure whether it's a complaint or a declaration of love. It probably comes out like the second one, because Scott thumps a fist against his arm and makes an alarmed sound. "Maybe it's just the legs. Maybe they just grow straight up, or something, because I swear they—"

Scott says, _"Stiles,"_ but it's already too late; when Stiles turns around the wolf right there, in front of him, staring judgmentally.

Wolves have a really good sense of smell, Stiles thinks. This one — the white one with the attitude problem, the one that's literally closed its teeth on Stiles' ass before — wouldn't even need a good sense of smell to know that Stiles isn't an elf. It's only like two inches away from him, snuffling at Stiles' person with a complete disregard for appropriate boundaries.

Stiles makes an embarrassing squeaking noise when the wolf's nose shoves into the crease of his armpit, and he hopes Scott will take his body home to his dad, even if his dad's eulogy is going to consist mostly of a million "I told you so"s.

"Derek!" Scott says, and his voice is way too loud and way too high to be anything like casual. "Hi! How are you! How's the team? Ready for the Christmas flight? I've been meaning to ask you, do you start them on like an exercise routine or something, so they're fit for it, or do they just magically—"

The wolf — Derek, what kind of name is _that_ for a vicious wolf-man-shaped killing machine? — grunts, like he's telling Scott to shut up, and then he follows his nose away from Stiles' body, thankfully, to Stiles' discarded loot. He noses at it, presses his face into the panda pajamas, and there's a long, tense moment when Stiles is sure the jig is up. Scott opens his mouth, Derek-the-wolfman growls under his breath, Stiles squeezes his eyes shut in anticipation of certain doom, and then...

Then there's a sound, from closer to the city walls, that's not quite a howl and not quite a roar, either, but it does sound decidedly annoyed.

When Stiles blinks open his eyes, it's started snowing again, there are flakes catching in his eyelashes, and Scott lets out a huge breath in a single whoosh.

The Great Wolf is gone.

Stiles takes a moment to internalize the fact that he's still alive, to process the idea that he's escaped entirely unscathed. Then Scott says, "Whew, that was close," like they almost got caught by their parents, which is _not_ the same thing as almost getting eaten, so Scott is clearly not appreciating the seriousness of their situation. "You ready to see the city, buddy? You're gonna love it."

It would take breathtakingly poor judgment on Stiles' part to press on, because there's no way that kind of luck will last. His heart's tripping in his chest and Scott's grinning and Stiles never did have very good impulse control. Of course he says yes.

+++

Miraculously, their luck _does_ last. And it keeps on lasting. There's really no way to explain it.

First, the way Stiles freezes up right inside the city gates and almost starts hyperventilating should gain more attention than it does. He really can't help himself, because it's one thing to see the city from the outside, but it's another to be standing inside the walls and seeing it all up close. It's dizzying, the way the spired buildings twist toward the sky, and the heat is incredible — the city's workshop fires are always burning, day and night, all year 'round, fueling a labor that never ends.

There are long strips of tiny lights blazing along seemingly every surface, spreading like slow-devouring ice even through the branches of the trees. And there are _lots_ of trees, sheltered within the walls, evergreens lining every street and side-street, all of them intricately decorated with shreds of metallic silver and shiny baubles like watching eyes. The elf-masters are wealthy enough to shower their _shrubs_ with riches on the backs of elf servitude. It's disgusting. And pretty. Stiles looks away, ashamed at the momentary wavering of his indignation on Scott's behalf.

"Where is everybody?" Stiles asks, his gaze darting down snow-frosted, nearly empty lanes, suspicious of a trap.

"In the workshop, mostly," Scott says, with a shrug, as if it's normal for a city's entire population to spend most of their lives building trinkets at the direction of their keepers. "This close to the Christmas flight, there's a lot of last-minute production to do. Most people don't actually write their Christmas list until November, at the earliest, much less actually communicate those wishes to one of our designated Santa representatives until December, so if we haven't predicted accurately what most of them will want — which is impossible, really — then we have to get most of it made in just a few weeks before Christmas Day. So, this is our busiest time of year."

"Right, sure," Stiles says, and wraps his coat a little tighter around his sides, like he's giving himself a hug. Even with only a few elves in the streets, and all of them apparently in a hurry, the city is huge and feels crowded; the area just inside the city gates alone is bigger than Stiles' whole village.

On the snowy cobbled street, there's a mess of fresh tracks, marks left by the passage of cloven-hoofed reindeer, and the occasional, obscured, five-toed and clawed tracks of the wolves. There's a clear, sharp impression of a pawed hand right next to Stiles' boot; he steps his foot down next to it, carefully, and shivers at the breadth of the track, the remembered size and closeness of the creature that left it.

"I'll show you the electronics workshop first," Scott says, and doesn't bother waiting for an answer; he grabs Stiles' hand and starts dragging him right into the city, like stealth is a thing he's never heard of.

Maybe they don't need any, though, because the elves they pass don't seem to even consider the idea that something's amiss. They look at him like his fashion choices are questionable, but not like they're intending to report him to the authorities, and all of them smile and wave and say, "Merry Christmas!" like they're really stoked about working themselves to the bone.

Scott shouts the same thing back at them, like forced cheerfulness is the official city religion, and then he jabs an elbow into Stiles' ribs, making him croak out the same strange greeting.

"Doesn't anybody just say 'hello' here?" Stiles grumbles, rubbing at his aching ribs.

"Are you sure you're a Yeti and not a Grinch?"

"I don't even know what a Grinch _is,_ they're definitely not native to this ecosystem," Stiles complains.

Nothing about the elf city is native to the ecosystem though, possibly not even the planet. Not that Stiles has ever traveled anywhere outside the environs of the North Pole, but he's watched _Planet Earth_ on Netflix, and he knows that reindeer aren't actually supposed to fly and wolves aren't supposed to have hands and human intelligences, and elves aren't supposed to even exist. But then, neither are Yetis, so there are clearly some places where the documentarians have fallen down on the job. He's considered writing an angry letter, but the only mail system in the North Pole is the one inside the city, which as it turns out is part of the tour.

The mailroom is massive, overflowing with letters from all over the world, and the workshops — there are quite a few of them — are even bigger, multi-storied and crowded with elves churning out a mind-boggling assortment of goods. No one seems to think it's odd that Scott's there, even though he tells them his shift is over, and none of them seem to think it's unusual that he's giving the grand tour to another elf. Nobody in the massive, incredible-smelling kitchens mentions how weird it is that Stiles has never had gingerbread before, and nobody in the Division of Decorations bats an eye at the way Stiles pokes at the string lights, even when he breaks a bulb and makes an entire string of them flicker out like candles in a draft. Scott whisks him through the core of the city that way, pointing out all the marvels and wonders, and Stiles has to admit that they are both marvelous and wonderful, but he's starting to get suspicious.

They're back out on the street, on their way to yet another workshop, when Stiles finally twigs to the entire problem. He feels a bit stupid that it took that long.

"Scott," he says, and stumbles to a halt right in the middle of the street where, thankfully, there's not actually any kind of traffic to speak of. The snow is still falling softly, draping itself in a picturesque fashion over the decorated trees, frosting the giant candy canes that act as lantern-posts along the street, adding a bit of extra cushion to the soft gumdrop benches. "Everybody knows I'm a Yeti, don't they?"

Scott's eyes go wide, and he waves his mittened hands like there's somebody around to overhear them. "Quiet!" he hisses, and Stiles knows now that it's all a lie. Elves don't seem to feel the cold; Scott doesn't even _need_ those mittens.

"Oh, come on! They've got to have noticed you've been giving me the grand tour, but supposedly I'm an elf! Shouldn't I know where everything is already? Aren't your people _born here?_ Wouldn't they all _know me_ already? Nobody comes into this city who _needs a tour,_ Scott!"

"Okay," Scott says, and lowers his hands. His shoulders slump a little. Stiles has never seen a puppy dog in person, but he's watched a lot of YouTube videos, so he knows what puppy dog eyes look like. He just had no idea that elves could deploy them as a defensive weapon. "I might've told everybody about you. And asked them to play along. But I knew you wouldn't just come in, and I knew you really wanted to see the place, and you wouldn't just walk in here in your fur and believe me that it was safe, so—"

"Even your mittens are a lie," Stiles says, and he wants it to come out angry and betrayed, but mostly he thinks he sounds disappointed.

"No, they're not," Scott says, and holds them up in front of himself, frowning, like he's trying to figure out what's wrong with them. "They're cute. Look, they have little snowflakes on the back and paw-prints on the palms. Boyd made them for me; he works over in the Fiber Arts Division. He's actually a Great Wolf, too, but he didn't care much for reindeer-herding, he likes knitting instead."

"I'm going to be turned into a worker, aren't I? You've lured me here to place me into captivity. I want you to know that the legends about Yeti strength are categorically _not true_ and our lifespans aren't that long so if you think you're going to get sixty years hard labor out of me, you are _completely wrong,_ and I—"

"I lured you here to give you hot cocoa and maybe sing some Christmas carols," Scott says. His tone is a strange, powerful combination of wounded, dejected, and exasperated. "There's a city-wide sing-along later, and then we all wave Santa off on his flight, and _then_ everybody gets together in the great hall for eggnog and apple cider and hot cocoa, and then it's basically just a huge party all night long and I'm not gonna lie, everybody gets kind of drunk on mulled wine, and—"

"Wait, you brought me in here for a party?" Stiles squints suspiciously, but he has to admit that he does have yet to be dragged away in shackles.

Scott shrugs. _"The_ party. Biggest one of the year. I couldn't let my bro miss out on it."

It's both a raw display of emotion and a punishment of sorts, when Stiles tackle-hugs him into the snow.

It's also kind of embarrassing, when he comes out on top, his weight pinning Scott in the snow, and realizes that there's somebody watching them. It might _kind of_ look like they're on the verge of having sex in the middle of the street.

Stiles sees the boots first, tall supple leather with fancy stitched snow motifs along the top cuff, and then warm woolen breeches, another handsomely embroidered coat, and a thickly eyebrowed, square-jawed, scowling face. The guy's pointy-eared like an elf, but he's also surprisingly scruffy, the bristle of hair on his jaw almost thick enough to qualify as a beard, and he pointedly does _not_ wish them a merry Christmas. There's a reindeer on either side of him, dressed in some kind of working harness, and the guy's holding them with a hand wrapped around each animal's halter, the same way Stiles has seen mushers hold back their sled dogs.

"Oh, hey Derek," Scott says, from the flat of his back, and he grins a stupid grin that tells Stiles that Derek's expression is probably less terrifying upside down.

Derek. Derek's face. Holy shit.

"You're the _wolf,"_ Stiles blurts out, tactlessly, and then he figures there's no harm in going for broke and adds, "You bit me on the _ass_ once."

"Mmm," Derek agrees, and then he gives Stiles a long look, one that appears to be _very comprehensive._ "One of my better ideas, I think."

Then he leads the reindeer around them, to where a woman is single-handedly pushing a huge sleigh out into the middle of the street, and there's nothing Stiles can do but twist around and watch him go. The view from the back is _stellar,_ and he's certain Derek is actually swaggering for his benefit. When Scott pushes him off, Stiles just starfishes out into the snow, sighing, watching Derek from a distance and upside down.

"I think I'm in love," he says.

Scott laughs at him, but he also rolls over, bumps their elbows together, and leans in close, pitches his voice low, and says, "I can help with that. Let me explain to you about mistletoe."

+++

The tour of the city is great, the Santa send-off is decidedly festive, and as it turns out, elf parties are done full-on bacchanalia-style, with so much food and drink the tables practically groan under the weight. There are people making out in every corner, and Stiles is determined to be one of them, which is why when he tracks Derek down he's got a spring of mistletoe hanging from each of his shortened horns.

Derek sighs at him and says, "Mistletoe is poisonous to my kind."

"Mistletoe is poisonous to everybody," Stiles tells him. "I'm not asking you to put your mouth on it. I'm asking you to put your mouth on other things."

To everyone's surprise, Derek actually _does._ They miss most of the party, but when Stiles breathlessly objects to that fact later — when he's sprawled out in the loft at the reindeer stables, on a squishy cushion of moss, desperately hard in his stupid tight elf-pants and adorned with a new collection of delicious bite-marks — Derek just kisses him again, nuzzles under his jaw, and says, "Happens every year. I guess you'll just have to stick around."

He has a job in the city before the spring melt begins. As it turns out all of the city's workers are startlingly well-paid, not to mention all of the additional benefits, like the completely magical health and dental service, available child-care, pelt-grooming, and all the gingerbread he can eat. Shacking up with the scruffy, sullen, occasionally furry reindeer-herder is just a bonus.


End file.
